Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys – most of whom were of African or Asian descent – between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders were particularly gruesome, involving rape, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by fellow Columbia Correctional Institution inmate Christopher Scarver with a bar from a weight machine while on work detail in the prison gym. Scarver described the deed as "the work of God." "213", the number of Dahmer's apartment (where the majority of his murders occurred and at the time of his arrest was littered with mutilated human remains) has since become a staple of popular culture.
Konerak was only fourteen and he was running for his life. This was his only chance to escape from the horrible-smelling apartment where the creepy blond guy had slipped him some kind of powerful drug. It seemed that luck was with him that he started to come around just as the blond man had left the apartment.
It took all the strength he had to get up and get to the door. He was so disoriented and panicked that it made no difference that he was naked. This was his only chance to survive. He was working strictly on instinct. Just get out of there and run away.
It was just before 2 A.M. and Sandra Smith called 911 to report the boy running around "butt naked." She didn't know who he was, but she knew he was injured and terrified.
The paramedics got there first and put a blanket around the naked, dazed boy. Two police officers arrived soon after and tried to understand what was going on with this young man of Asian descent.
Sandra Smith, 18, and her cousin Nicole Childress, also 18, were standing near the boy when the Milwaukee city police arrived. The tall blond man was also standing near the boy. The conversation became heated between the girls, the blond man and the police.
The tall blond man told the police the Konerak was his 19-year-old lover who had been drinking too much. Konerak, who was drugged and incoherent, wasn't able to contradict the smooth-talking blond man. Dahmer gave the police a picture ID.
The two young women tried to intervene. They had seen the terrified boy trying to resist the blond man before the police arrived. They were angry and upset. The police were ignoring them and listening to the white man instead.
Just to be on the safe side, the two officers went with the boy and the tall blond man to his apartment. The apartment smelled bad, but it was very neat. Konerak's clothing was folded and placed on the sofa. There were a couple of photographs of Konerak in black bikini briefs.
Konerak sat quietly on the sofa unable to talk intelligently. It's not even clear that he understood the calm explanation the blond man was giving the police. The blond man was apologizing that his lover had caused a disturbance and promised it wouldn't happen again.
The police believed the blond man. They had no reason not to — he was well-spoken, intelligent and very calm. The Asian was apparently drunk and incoherent. The officers, not wanting to get in the middle of a domestic argument between homosexual lovers, left the apartment with Konerak still sitting quietly on the sofa. In that neighborhood, the officers felt that there were more pressing things for them to do.
What they missed in the apartment bedroom was the body of Tony Hughes, whose decomposing corpse had lain for three days on the bed.
What they missed was the blond man immediately strangling the Asian boy and having sex with his corpse.
What they missed were the photos that the blond man took of the dead boy, the subsequent dismemberment of his body, and the cleaning of his skull to be kept as a trophy.
What they missed was the opportunity to take the name of Jeffrey Dahmer off the ID that the man gave them and run a background check, which would have told them than the calm, well-spoken man was a convicted child molester who was still on probation.
The story didn't stop there. The two girls who the police ignored went back home to Sandra Smith's mother, Glenda Cleveland, 36, the woman who lived next to the Oxford Apartments which Jeffrey Dahmer called home. Later, Cleveland called up the officers to find out what happened to the Asian boy. She asked how old the child was. "It wasn't a child. It was an adult," the officer said.
When she continued to ask questions, he told her: "Ma'am, I can't make it any more clear. It's all taken care of. He's with his boyfriend and in his boyfriend's apartment…It's as positive as I can be…I can't do anything about somebody's sexual preferences in life."
A couple of days later, Cleveland called the officers back after she read a newspaper article about the disappearance of a Laotian boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone, who looked like the boy that had seen trying to escape from Jeff Dahmer. They never sent anybody to talk with her.
Cleveland even tried contacting the Milwaukee office of the FBI, but nothing came of it.
That is, until a couple of months later on Monday, July 22, 1991, when all hell broke loose.
A couple of months later on July 22, 1991, two Milwaukee police officers were driving around in the very high-crime area around Marquette University. The heat was oppressive and the humidity almost unbearable. The smell of the neighborhood was all the more pungent in the heat: the garbage on the streets, the urine and feces left by the homeless, the rancid stink of cooked grease.
Around midnight, as the two officers sat in their car, they saw a short, wiry black man with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. Assuming that this man had escaped from another policeman, they asked him what he was doing. The man started to pour out a tale about this "weird dude" who put the cuffs on him in his apartment. The man was Tracy Edwards.
Edwards' story smacked of some homosexual encounter that normally the police would avoid, but the two policemen thought they ought to check out this man that had cuffed Edwards who lived at the Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street. The door to Apartment 213 was opened by a nice looking thirty-one-year-old blond man.
Dahmer was very calm and rational. He offered to get the key to the handcuffs in the bedroom. Edwards remembered that the knife that Dahmer had threatened him with was also in the bedroom.
Once of the officers decided to go into the bedroom himself and take a look. He noticed photographs lying around that shocked him: dismembered human bodies, skulls in the refrigerator. When he collected his wits, he yelled to his partner to cuff Dahmer and place him under arrest.
